


It Gets Us All in the End

by malatruse



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Established Relationship, Ficlet, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Fall of Overwatch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 10:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17547557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malatruse/pseuds/malatruse
Summary: It shouldn't be possible to contract hanahaki when you're already in a relationship with the person you love.





	It Gets Us All in the End

These days, they fought constantly, about what felt like everything. Jack had his vision of how he wanted things to be run, and Gabe simply felt those reasons were idealistic bullshit. This was, he felt, the natural order of bureaucracy, and at the end of the day, maybe they didn’t sleep in the same room anymore, their schedules didn’t line up enough for them to eat together, they didn’t even see each other every day...but that didn’t matter, because they still loved each other.

The first time Gabe felt that tickling at the back of his throat wasn’t after one of their fights, though. He’d just returned from a rough mission; the kid had gotten hurt, and Moira hadn’t been with them for healing. The ride back had been silent save for McCree’s labored breathing, and Gabe’s own pained grunts whenever the Orca banked too sharply. He wasn’t thinking about the debrief or the paperwork or the inevitable trip to medical, just about seeing Jack’s exasperated expression when they landed.

But when he stepped out into the hangar, only stumbling once, Jack just looked at him and said, “Oh, not again,” and left without a backward glance. No blazing fire in his eyes, no admonishments or concern, and Gabe stumbled again from a sudden wave of dizziness. At the time, he dismissed the moment of vertigo and his scratchy throat as a post-mission illness. It was known to happen sometimes, it would pass after his visit to medical.

Instead, it got worse.

Sometimes he’d go hours feeling fine, and then he’d videoconference Jack about cost reduction and it would start up again, the tickling building until he had to hang up abruptly to cough.

Gabe didn’t bother mentioning it to anyone; the shit they’d done to him in SEP, he could have radiation poisoning or worse, and if that was the case, he didn’t want to know how bad it was until he was actually perishing.

That worked pretty well for a while; he usually felt fine on missions, and if he could still do his job, it didn’t matter how bad he felt off the field. Except then Jack tried to bench him, and he started coughing up petals.

It was the first time Gabe had seen him in a while, and coincidentally had also been feeling better. He was in his office trying to figure out whether Angela actually needed him to sign off on her latest upgrades for Shimada or whether she was sending him her notes out of courtesy, when Jack walked in.

“Did you tell Liao I approved this mission?”

Gabe shrugged. “You would have if you had the good sense to look ahead. We need more weapons than Torbjörn and his team can put together—“

“Because you keep tossing your guns away when they break!” For a moment Jack’s voice took on that familiar tone to go with his familiar argument, and Gabe’s heart swelled. But then Jack seemed to catch himself, said, “Don’t do this. If you truly value what we had—“ _had?_ “—you’ll listen to me this one time.”

Gabe’s throat closed up, and he barely managed a shake of his head. “Out,” he said, and Jack went, looking like he thought he’d won. But Gabe was hunched over the trash bin, coughing what felt like his guts out, too busy focusing on the wrong parts of their conversation to remember until much later what Jack had asked of him.

Because there in the trash, and cloying on his tongue, were deep blue ovular petals.

At that point he was forced to do some research. First on the petals themselves, thinking maybe it was a one-off from something he’d eaten that had gone down wrong, but all that came up were flower blogging sites about what was, apparently, _Helleborus orientalis_ , lenten rose. Originally from Greece, but found most commonly growing wild in the midwest United States. A place he hadn’t been for several years, not since Thanksgiving dinner with Jack’s family right after the end of the crisis, and he hadn’t even seen any roses at the time.

A change in search criteria brought up something a little more relevant. Flower wasting sickness, it was called. The causes he found for it were ridiculous, as was the cure. Even if he believed the forums and the sketchy medical journals, he and Jack had been together for years! This bullshit about unrequited love sounded like a disease a loser would make up from too much time obsessing over a  popular vlogger.

Still, he couldn’t deny his own anecdotal evidence. In his office Jack said, if you value what we _had_ , past tense. Maybe Gabe should have noticed earlier how far apart the two of them had drifted, but he hadn’t and the fact remained that since then, his cough had only gotten worse, and the petals had started coming out.

When it wasn’t just petals, but leaves and pollen and blood he was coughing up, he went to Moira. It was a long chance in hell that Jack would suddenly start loving him again, but he had a brilliant and unethical scientist on-staff who was more than willing to run some tests and perform some operations.  

Afterward, she showed him what she had removed, the mess of leaves and stems, and the delicate root system that had been choking him from the inside. Afterward, he felt better. And the side effects that Moira warned him about? He didn’t mind those so much, either. They were all worth it, to be able to breathe easily once again, to think clearly for what felt like the first time since the crisis.

The world needed a new organization, he’d realized, one not constricted by the red tape of the U.N., nor beholden to a code of ethics like Overwatch. It needed new icons to look to. But for that, the old icons would need to be removed from the picture.

Once upon a time, he would have found the thought of killing Jack unimaginable. But the Reaper was blissfully free of the burdens of love.

**Author's Note:**

> I have no beta so please let me know about any spelling/grammar errors!


End file.
